An analytical framework for a behavioural analysis of non‐compliance in food supply chains

Business malpractice in supply chains raises the food safety risks for downstream buyers, including consumers. This paper aims to analyse the multiplicity of behavioural factors influencing producers' motivation to break the food safety norms intentionally.

The paper reviews existing disciplinary approaches for the analysis of behavioural risks. Based on this review, an analytical framework is developed which provides a base for an interdisciplinary institutional analysis of behavioural risks in food chains.

The reviewed approaches on behavioural risk share the view that deviance is the result of multi‐goal and (potentially) opportunistic decision making of bounded rational individuals. The analytical framework presented in this paper integrates these approaches.

The analytical framework provides a rough categorisation of behavioural drivers. It neither details the context‐dependent subcomponents that determine the utility outcome within each category nor the methods that should be used to analyse them.

A behavioural economic analysis based on the framework means opening up the black box of the regulatees' action situation by incorporating the subjectively perceived material incentives in addition to immaterial motivations such as reputation effects, social norms and community pressure into the analysis. Based on an understanding of producers' motivation, proper institutional solutions can be implemented to enhance producers' compliance with food safety norms.